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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Ferrari offer Raikkonen a contract for 2014

The August summer break is the onset of the silly season of Formula 1, where a lot of teams decide and even announce their line-up for the following year. While everyone was looking at the Red Bull seat next to Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso went and said that he wanted one of the other cars for his birthday. He also went on to say that he would spend his summer break praying for improvements.

Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo reportedly gave Alonso an earful, which was surprisingly made public on the team's official website. At the same time, reports in German publication Bild suggest that Luca is also trying to bury the hatchet with his teams last World Champion, Kimi Raikkonen and has made him an offer to drive for Ferrari in 2014.

A meeting between Alonso's manager and Christian Horner might have driven the team to look for a replacement number one driver in case the Spaniard decides to quit on the Maranello squad, after they failed to provide him with a championship winning car in the four years he has driven for them. While he has a contract with them till the end of 2016 there are most certainly exit clauses linked to performance.

Ironically Raikkonen drove for the great Italian marque for three years and even won the title in 2007 but was forced to leave Ferrari one year early at the end of 2009 when the team replaced him with Fernando Alonso. Raikkonen could be being lined up to replace either Alonso or Massa, with the latter's seat up for grabs at the end of this year.Bild correspondents reported that Ferrari “has made the Finn an offer”.

The claim that the offer is “more lucrative” than what is on the table from Red Bull was made to the Finn on the Thursday before the Hungarian Grand Prix. This would indicate that he is being lined up for Massa's seat, as Fernando had not yet made his offensive comments by then.

According to Bild, Red Bull’s offer is a $15 million retainer, performance bonuses, and sponsorship of his motocross team, so Ferrari's offer is obviously a bigger package in trying to woo Kimi back.